Round 1: Short Film Credits

Top Score: 8 (Djinn & Phonics)

Bottom Score: 3

Comment: The clue was “Vincent D’Onofrio: FMJ.” Actual answer: Full Metal Jacket. Best wrong answer: Fuck My Junk.

Round 2: This Doesn’t Sound Like Mariah Carey

Top Score: 12 (Djinn & Phonics, Hjarta Heroes)

Bottom Score: 4

Comment: I sadly love Chris Brown’s song “Forever.” I am ashamed. But I’m glad that one team decided the song was called “Wifebeatin’.” I especially appreciate the apostrophe at the end of that fake song title.

Round 3: Which Came First? Junk Food Edition

Top Score: 6 (Great Odin’s Beard)

Bottom Score: 2

Comment: I like to imagine that the debut of Cheetos in 1948 was a direct result of the war. “Congratulations, boys. Here’s tasty poison.”

Round 4: A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama!

Top Score: 8 (Hjarta Heroes)

Bottom Score: 4

Comment: Man, questions about grammar do not go over well at drunken pub quizzes.

Round 5: The Road to Fame

Top Score: 6 (Djinn & Phonics, Hjarta Heroes, It’s Plausible, Sassage Flare!)

Bottom Score: 5

Comment: This was a good test of what teams wanted to see certain people naked. Hell no, Macauley Culkin has never been nude on camera. Perverts.

Round 6: Abracafuckingdabra

Top Score: 6 (Sassage Flare!)

Bottom Score: 3

Comment: You are right, Hjarta Heroes. Luxor is the lamest hotel ever.

Round 7: From Hollywood to Arlen

Top Score: 7 (Sassage Flare!)

Bottom Score: 2

Comment: Correct. Carl Reiner is in fact “Jewish Guy.” That doesn’t get you a point, but it made me laugh.

Round 8: Random Knowledge

Top Score: 15 + Joker (winners Trivial League of Trivia)

Bottom Score: 6

Comment: Ishtar is a great movie. Screw the mainstream. Elaine May is a goddamn genius, and I hate that the poor reaction to that film killed her directorial career. How dare you, America. HOW DARE YOU!

Important things first: Hjarta Heroes became the first team at Nick's Off Market to win first place three weeks in a row! Congratulations, yo!

And now onto nerdy shit.

The Great Gatsby comes out this Friday, and while I’m a big fan of Baz Lurhmann’s nonsense, I care much, much more about F. Scott Fitzgerald, who I consider America’s greatest author. And as with most celebrated American artists, he was a complicated fellow with a crummy life and almost nothing to show for what fleeting bits of fame impressed themselves upon him.

And he chronicled each and every bit of it.

Now, everything Fitzgerald wrote was about himself. From his early stuff, to the shit he wrote drunk and impoverished in a Hollywood bungalow, it was all about him. He grew up a middle class kid from St. Paul who was lucky enough to go back East to school with kids far richer than he could have ever hoped to be. And he wanted to be just like them. He wanted to dress like them and play football like them and go on hayrides with girls like them. And so did Basil Duke Lee. Basil Duke Lee is Fitzgerald and Fitzgerald is Basil Duke Lee. The Basil & Josephine Stories. Basil Duke Lee. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

He wrote about his college days. Princeton. The original title of This Side of Paradise isn't "The Romantic Egotist" for nothing. Little Basil D. Lee grew up to be Amory Blaine. This Side of Paradise. Armory Blaine. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Then he moves to Long Island, and infiltrates the rich and parties of the Jazz Age socialites, but being in debt, never entirely fitting in. And what is Gatsby ostensibly about? A man infiltrating Long Island high society in the 1920s and watching it crumble around him.

Final line: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." We can't escape our past. You know where that line shows up again? Fitzgerald's tombstone. The Great Gatsby. Nick Carraway. F. Scott Fitzgerald. But then what happens? Fitzgerald goes to Hollywood, and Hollywood murders Fitzgerald. He spends years slaving away at studios rewriting other people's scripts and becomes the kind of hack writer he creates in Pat Hobby. Hobby is a loveless, penniless drunk, and Fitzgerald dies the same way. The Pat Hobby Stories. Pat Hobby. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

But I’m not sure how much people know, or how much they even care. I used to work in the film industry, and like a conceited prick, I quickly grew weary of people who had no concept of literary and cinematic history. People didn't come to Los Angeles to forward the artistry of the written word or the moving picture. They didn't come for the intellectual. They came to make money. To gain respect from the wrong people. To bang famous actresses.

But that's not how things really work out, is it? The best these people will get is a 10th place finisher on America's Next Top Model who has a drug problem, or the first voted off the island on Survivor that nobody can remember. Busted ass strippers. As the unforgiving sun beats down on you 12 months a year, you hear the deafening noise of youth, distracted by pretty lights and designer drugs, stimulated day and night. But that scream you hear isn't actually life. It's their insecurities and neuroses struggling to be heard. It's the sound of a million plastic breasts popping in unison. Because within ten years, they'll be a shell of their former selves. In Los Angeles, a terrible city with miserable traffic, a confused freeway system designed by greedy car companies, its smog-choked atmosphere, its false fronts and its rotten interiors, that's how things really are.

In short, I hated Los Angeles.

Fitzgerald had one final trick up his sleeve. His last novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, is about somebody else. And his life ends before he can finish it. What's it about? The muck, the horror, the lies of the industry that Hollywood people live every day, and how it eats away at all of us from within. He had it right.

I’m watching Wife Swap right now. Don’t judge. I don’t judge the shitty television shows you watch. It is my right as an American citizen to have eclectic pop culture tastes, from the fancy schmancy wares of Masterpiece Theatre to the idiotic charms of Flo Rida’s “Whistle” (the most jovial song about blowjobs e’er I heard). And it’s yours, too. Over the last five years, I’ve been changing the way I handle pop culture conversations, and it all boils down to applying the Golden Rule – “Do Unto Others…”—and basically trying not being a dick.

Let me explain. If somebody likes a show or a musical artist or a film or a book that you despise, I don’t really find it very productive to cut that person down. They like what they like for a reason. Why would you want to bring other people down? Would you like them tearing down your tastes? I know that this can sometimes make me seem wishy-washy about my opinions, but wouldn’t you rather bring somebody up?

It’s not as hippy-dippy as you think it is. It leads to great talks. Find common ground, then discuss the project in question from a creative perspective. Not everybody agrees with me, but I believe that everything matters. Mainstream movies serve a purpose. They tell them about our interests. They act as history. Even if they’re awful, they’re worthy of study and debate for years to come.

Or you could just call me out and say this is my way of defending watching Wife Swap, which I swear to god is one of the most interesting shows on network television.

EMBRACE YOUR CULTURE! DON’T BE A DICK TO OTHERS! EAT FOOD! NOT TOO MUCH! MOSTLY PLANTS!

• The Royal Hilltop - Aurora 8:00 PM
• Darcy's Bistro & Pub - Denver 8:30 PM
• Prickly Pete's - Denver 8:00 PM
• The Whiskey Bar - Denver 7:00 PM
• The Cheeky Monk - Westminster 9:00 PM
• The Ram (Meridian) - Meridian 9:00 PM
• Lisa's Restaurant & Lounge - Augusta 7:30 PM
• Opal Divine's (Marina) - Austin 10:00 PM
• Opal Divine's (Penn Field) - Austin 10:00 PM